“Why should we change onstage? We're not trying to be something big and fancy, it's just us, doing what we do, and we’d like to keep it that way.”

It is "Cliff" Burton’s birth anniversary today! He was an American musician, best known as the bass guitarist for the American thrash metal band Metallica. Burton joined Metallica in 1982 and performed on the band's first three studio albums, Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets. He also received a posthumous writing credit for the song "To Live Is to Die" from the band's fourth studio album...And Justice For All.

Unfortunately, on the 27th of September, 1986, Burton died in a bus accident in rural southern Sweden as the band was touring in support of the Master of Puppets album. Burton was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Metallica on April 4, 2009. He was selected as the ninth greatest bassist of all time in an online reader poll organized by Rolling Stone in 2011.

On April 4, 2009, Burton was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with the rest of Metallica. During the ceremony, the induction was accepted by his father Ray Burton, who shared the stage with the band and mentioned that Cliff's mother was actually Metallica's biggest fan!

A biography, To Live Is to Die: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton, written by Joel McIver, was published by Jawbone Press in June 2009. Hammett provided the book's foreword.